When life hands you lemons...

...salt 'em up.



Over the holidays, my dad gave me one of my new favorite cookbooks, Well Preserved: Recipes and Techniques for Putting Up Small Batches of Seasonal Foods by Eugenia Bone. I love canning, but even I sometimes get sick of jam, and there's always the question of what you do with the stuff in those jars once you're ready to use them. This book solves both problems, with amazing recipes for unique, delicious preserves as well as multiple recipes for utilizing each one.

For example, there's a recipe for salty brined Meyer lemon preserves. Once those are done, you can use them in soups or tagine, or in the cookbook's recipes for Preserved Meyer Lemon Risotto or Chicken Cutlets with Preserved Meyer Lemons and Parsley. The possibilities are endless since salt and lemons go with just about everything!

Now is the time to get in on Meyer lemon action; they're at their best if you can find them at a farmers' market or a good co-op. You can use regular lemons, but you'll need to juice more of them and they won't be as good. Trust me, if you haven't tried cooking with Meyer lemons, they make a world of difference - the skin is thin and flavorful, almost all zest with very little pith, and the flesh is sweet and succulent and oh so juicy, like a fresh-picked heirloom tomato. You want to put up some of these now so that you'll have salty lemon goodness to go with all your spring asparagus and cucumber salads later.

To start: Take two half-pint canning jars and run them through the dishwasher, keeping them very hot until you're ready to use them. Or boil them in a large pot of water to sterilize that way. Simmer the round flat lids to soften the rubber seal (you don't have to sterilize the rings).

You will need 10 Meyer lemons, and 1/2 cup of salt. That's it.

Juice four of the lemons, getting as much of the juice out as you can, and set aside. Trim the stem-ends off the other six lemons, then quarter them into wedges. Sprinkle a little salt in the bottom of a jar, then cram the lemon quarters into it, packing them in however they fit together with as little space as possible. Sprinkle salt in there as you go, so that the salt is evenly distributed, and do both jars so that you wind up with 12 lemon wedges and 1/4 cup of salt in each one. Pour half the juice into each jar and knock it around, tilt it, run a knife around the edge, whatever you need to do to make sure there are no air bubbles. Put the lids on - not super-tight - and set aside on the counter.

Mark your calendar for two weeks from now. Every couple of days between now and then, pick up each jar and roll it all around. Don't shake it, but mix it all up so that the salt dissolves evenly into the juice. (It'll take it a couple of days to dissolve completely.) Let them ferment for the full two weeks, and then they're ready. Move them into the fridge at that point; they'll be good for six months if they last that long!

Moroccan Lamb Tagine

Nothing like a dish you can make without really having to pay attention to anything going on for the better part of an hour. Perfect for a lazy dinner that is still full of flavour and inspired from a Masterchef recipe, it's a winner in my house every time I cook it. I try to make it last until lunch the next day, but it never does.

Make dinner. Insert face.

Moroccan Lamb Tagine w/ Saffron Lemon CousCous
Olive oil
1 kg lamb steaks
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tspn ground coriander
1 tspn ground cumin
1 tspn ground turmeric
¼ tspn ground ginger
¼ tspn cayenne pepper
1 tspn ground cinnamon
Zest and juice of 1 orange
1 cup vegetable stock
½ cup roasted blanched almonds, coarsely chopped
Salt and pepper
CousCous
1 lemon, zested and juiced
4 threads saffron

Preheat oven to 160C. Brown lamb steaks in olive oil until medium. Most recipes call for diced cubes, but I wanted steaks this time, because I just felt like a change. Place steaks in bottom of tagine.
Fry onions until soft and clear. Add spices and cook until so fragrant, you want to lick the pan or about one minute. Add orange juice and vegetable stock. Stir for three minutes, scraping up delicious goo from bottom of pan. Place liquid in tagine, sprinkle with almonds, salt and pepper to taste, cover and bake for 45 minutes.
After 40 minutes, boil some water and place lemon juice and saffron threads into the liquid. Take off fire and place cous cous into spiced water, covering and waiting 3 minutes. Afterwards, place either a tablespoon of butter or oil in the cous cous and put back on hob. Stir for a few minutes and take off heat.
Serve with orange zest and coriander if desired.

-Elizabeth

Tight-Arse Tuesdays - Moroccan Beef and Lentil Stew

Saving for a wedding is quite difficult and, as foodies, can be devastating to find out the only place you can cut back on your spending is food. For us, food is a major part of our lives. I don't even make a point to buy many snacks.
For a couple weeks the most snacks in my cupboard were a packet of Poptarts that said "Do Not Eat" in Post-its and two packets of chips, which my flatmate ate anyway. So obviously it's not prepackaged food I'm buying too much of.
Simply put, it's the meat I eat, the sauces I like and the fresh fruit and vegetables I buy by the kilo a week. That being said, I still need to figure out meals I can make that are both thrifty and filling.
Lentils are an amazingly cheap resource. Probably cheaper than where I get them, as well, which is the local grocery store. As it is, I think this entire meal cost me no more than Twenty Dollars including two loaves of bread and pre-made hummus and it feeds roughly 8 servings. So.. four hungry people. Or two full-grown men who have built a house.


Moroccan Beef and Lentil Stew
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 red onion, diced
500g chuck steak
3 cloves garlic, diced
2 tablespoons fresh ginger
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon cumin, ground
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1/2 tsp cinnamon, smoked paprika (honestly I put a tablespoon of this in), and turmeric
1 tsp chilli flakes
pinch saffron
2 carrots, diced
400g fresh diced tomatoes
2 cups lentils (I used green)
8 cups water
S&P to taste

Honestly, there's a million directions in this recipe and I didn't care. Not only did I not have pumpkin which it asked for, I hate celery in soup, so I didn't use it (and thus didn't include it in the ingredients). The original recipe didn't have meat and used tinned tomatoes. As I was preparing the dish, I discovered my fiancee had used ALL the tinned tomatoes in last night's disaster of a pasta dish he called spaghetti.

80% of recipes will tell you to brown meat before throwing it in a crockpot. Ever tried it? Ever tried not doing it? Newsflash: IT TASTES, FEELS AND LOOKS EXACTLY THE SAME. No need to ever bother with it.

So what do I say? Throw EVERYTHING in the crockpot, as is. Just dump everything in. Takes less time than dumping a body, I promise. Set to high for four to six hours. DONE! Then hide the crockpot, tell your husband you spent all day slaving over it and get him to give you a foot massage!

Served with hummus, Aussie Outback dukkah in olive oil, garlic white bread and whole grain seed bread, lightly toasted.

-Elizabeth